Matchstick Girl
by TeaRoses
Summary: An abrasive doctor treats an equally abrasive burn victim after a hotel fire. House/Silent Hill crossover. Gen fic.


Silent Hill and its characters belong to Konami. The character of Dr. Gregory House belongs to David Shore and others. No copyright infringement is intended or implied.

This fic originally appeared on LiveJournal. Thank you to anarchicq for being my beta and giving me a title.

A.N. This is set well before House canon though, so he doesn't have his job at Princeton Plainsborough or his leg injury. (Dr. Corr, who makes a brief appearance, is an OC.)

Matchstick Girl

"House?"

He looked up, not meeting Dr. Corr's eyes. "What?"

"You're on duty in the burn center tonight. They got a new patient yesterday."

"Let's see: Burn victims. Not my specialty. So, no."

"Your job is what I say it is, so stop being a smart-ass and do it."

House considered for a minute. Would looking for a new job be worth pissing Corr off again?

"So what's the deal, anyway?" he asked.

"Look at her chart," said Dr. Corr impatiently.

"I never did get the hang of that 'reading' thing."

"Burns all over the torso. She was stabilized in a local hospital but they couldn't do enough for her burns there so they brought her here now."

"Are her parents here?

"Her parents died in the fire. It was a hotel fire, except they picked the kid up a mile away on the other side of a lake. Nobody can figure that one out."

"What lake?"

"Toluca Lake in Silent Hill."

"Where the hell is that?"

Dr. Corr shrugged. "Near Ashfield."

"There's no burn center any closer than here?"

"Are you going to stand here arguing with me or go do what I told you to?"

House looked at his watch. "Standing here arguing sounds good to me."

But Corr had already walked away. Gregory House sighed to himself. Maybe he could just get this over with and then go see if the new nurse in the oncology ward was as easy as she looked.

He walked into the girl's room and picked the chart up from the end of the bed. "Let's see... Laura! I'm Dr. House. Looks like the nurses just took your vitals and you've already been evaluated. How are you feeling?" House hated sounding this smarmy but he didn't want anyone overhearing him talking to a kid the way he talked to adults. Someday he'd have a job where he could treat everybody however he wanted, but that day wasn't today.

"Just great," she replied with heavy sarcasm.

"Are you in any pain?"

"I have third degree burns all over me, what do you think?" she asked.

_I think I wish they'd burned your mouth,_ he thought.

"You haven't had pain medication in four hours. You can ask the nurses for more now."

"Or you could give it to me, since you're standing right there."

House went through three mental cycles of "Not my job," "But neither is the rest of this," before he gave up and got the morphine. When he held the syringe to the girl's arm, which was undamaged, she just looked at him somberly.

"Aren't you going to tell me this is going to hurt?" she asked.

"I figured you were smart enough to figure that out," he replied. She actually smiled at that.

"Let me check your dressings," he said.

"That really is going to hurt," she muttered.

"No, we're not going to change them right now."

The girl had been burned pretty badly. Not enough to put her in the "clinging to life" category obviously, and she didn't really have third degree burns all over her, but it was nasty.

"They won't tell me where I'm going to live," she said.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, my parents are dead, and there isn't anyone else. And the nurses are tired of my questions."

"The nurses don't know that either. They'll bring a social worker in, and she'll figure something out."

"What do you mean, 'figure something out?'"

House shrugged. "I'm not a social worker. Or a nurse."

"I don't think the nurses here like me much," Laura went on.

"Maybe it's your extremely pleasant demeanor," he said.

"You think I don't know what that means, don't you?"

"How old are you?" he asked.

"I'm eight. It's right there in my chart."

"I thought maybe you were thirty," he muttered.

"I scared one of the nurses, and now they don't like me. But she was just stupid."

"How did you scare her?" asked House. This could be interesting, if it was true.

"I told her about the burned girl."

"Someone else in the fire? Why would that scare a nurse in the burn ward?"

"No, I saw her right before the fire. In the hallway at the hotel. But she didn't come in from anywhere, she was just there."

House rolled his eyes. "You had a bad dream, then. Or a hallucination."

"No. I saw her, but nobody would really walk around like that, all scars and bandages. She was burned all over, even her face."

"You can't survive if you're burned all over."

"I know, but she wasn't dead. She told me it wasn't her fault," Laura said.

"What wasn't her fault?"

"The fire, maybe. I don't know. She tried to tell me it was starting and that I should run. I wanted to go down the hall and get my parents instead. But it was already too late and I couldn't get through the fire. And then I got burned."

"And that story scared the nurse?"

"She said I was crazy."

"A nurse really said--" He tried not to laugh.

"Well, she had a bunch of words for it. Post--"

"Post-traumatic stress disorder?" House asked. Were the nurses trying to diagnose the patients again? That one didn't even make sense, though.

"I don't remember. The nurse looked really scared, and then she said they'd bring in a special doctor for me, to talk about the burned girl, but I don't want to anymore."

"And are you scared of this girl?" House asked curiously. He didn't believe in ghosts, but he believed in hallucinations and nightmares. Laura must have seen something after the fire, though, not before.

"No, I'm not afraid of her. She liked me. And it wasn't her fault."

"So why don't you want to talk about her?" he asked. _Not that I really want to listen to more of this,_ he told himself privately.

"I don't want to get her in trouble. I don't think she has any parents either, or why would she be walking around like that by herself?"

"Trust me, no one is going to go out to Silent Hill and look for her," said House.

"Because they're not going to believe me?" she asked.

"Bingo."

"So you think I'm lying."

That was also a strong possibility, but House didn't say that either.

"Anyway, I only got out of the hotel because the girl told me how. There was a hole there, and she took me through it, and then I was somewhere else."

"A hole?" House asked. This was making less and less sense.

Laura nodded. "Like a tunnel, but all of a sudden. They picked me up by the lake, and the men in the ambulance kept saying they couldn't figure out how I made it that far."

"They didn't see the hole?"

Laura rolled her eyes. "It's gone now."

House sighed.

"You don't believe me either, do you?" she asked.

Of course he didn't. It did impress him, though, that this girl seemed far calmer and less insane than any of the hundreds of other people who had looked into his eyes and asked if he believed them.

"It doesn't matter if I believe you. Do you actually want them to bring in that psychiatrist? Because to be honest, he's a jerk."

"No. I just want to know where I'm going to go after this."

"I'll make sure they call the social worker, then." He really would, too. She wasn't going to get very far asking the nurses for things at this point. "Listen," he added. "You should tone it down about mysterious tunnels." The psychiatrist wasn't going to help her, and there was no sense getting this girl a mental health diagnosis based on one nightmare or her imagination or whatever it was. Or maybe she was just lying, after all, for the attention.

"Yeah. I think you're right. I don't want to end up in the nuthouse. I know when to keep my mouth shut."

"No, you don't. But try. And on that note, it's time for me to leave."

She just nodded. As he left, she added, "I'm not lying," but it was in a calm voice, not like a petulant child, and for a moment he believed her.

On the way out, one of the nurses called to him. "Has she calmed down yet?"

House looked up irritably. "Laura? She's perfectly calm."

"She hasn't been telling her stories? I think we should bring--"

"Just calm down yourself," said House as he marched off to the oncology ward. "Everybody lies."


End file.
